Microsoft Word Files from Mac to PC

[Scuall]

New Mac user here, posted in the hardware forum that I just purchased a G5 PowerMac at an auction for a great price.

Anyways, I'm planning to retire an aging desktop that my wife uses occasionally. I was planning to do as such with this G5. I am considering purchase of Office '08 for the Mac, strictly for Word use. I have read that Office '08 for the Mac = crap.

My question is to those of you out there that have used the '08 Word program is how well does the Mac .doc file translate back to a PC file? My wife is an attorney, and as such the briefs she types up are highly regulated in format and length. I would hate to have her work on a file at home, only to have to do much editing of the file back at the office.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Raid]

Well I use both versions of Office (2008 for Mac and 2003 on the PC) and while I don't have any restrictions on my word documents, I don't think I've noticed any difference when working on the same file in both operating systems. The one thing that might throw things out of whack is font compatibility (I think the mac has more), but if you stick to fonts common between the two operating systems I think you should be ok.

Oh and for what it's worth Office 2008 is fine for most users, but power excel users will miss a few features (like a Macro editor and keyboard shortcuts). The Mac version of Word with the floating format windows takes a little getting used to, but I eventually found it a little faster to use.

 

[Scuall]

Thanks for the reply. It seems so far (based on what I've read) that most of the gripes are centered about Excel. I haven't heard anything yet about Word.

 

[Gray-Wolf]

.doc on the Mac = .doc on the PC

Just make sure not to save as .docx as that type only works on the newest version of Word, be it Mac or PC

 

[PeteB]

There's nothing wrong with Office 2008 on the Mac, it just so happens that it has a completely different way of working. When you get used to it, it's a breeze.

There's certainly no compatibility issues (aside from Mac-specific fonts as mentioned above, but then you'd have the same issues on PCs if you installed and used third-party fonts).

 

[rat tat tat]

Adding to what Imac-Knight says, when you're saving a document make sure that you have 'append file extension' checked. Opening an attachment from mac to pc, pc users will not know what the extension its using if the append file extension is not enabled.

 

[plinden]

rat tat tat has answered with what I was going to. My wife has sent me Word docs written on her MB that I could open, but her Windows-using colleagues couldn't. I realized eventually (while I was in Terminal and noticed the files didn't have an extension) that the Mac knows the file type even if the extension is absent, but Windows doesn't.

 

[Scuall]

Got it, much mahalos (thank you) to everyone. I prolly should have stated that I am an OpenOffice diehard, that is where I have seen a lot of format changes.